


The Bourne Purpose

by rsadelle



Category: Bourne (Movies)
Genre: Character Death Fix, Fix-It, Gen, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-11 11:23:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7889728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rsadelle/pseuds/rsadelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Jason Bourne finds out that Nicky Parsons is alive, he goes up against the CIA to help her escape them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bourne Purpose

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Jason Bourne.

**Langley, Virginia**

"Yes?" Heather looked up from her screen as someone tapped on her door.

"Ma'am, we've gotten word from Athens. Nicky Parsons is awake and coherent. She's expected to make nearly a full recovery."

Heather nodded. "Good. Plant the story, and get me on a plane to Athens tonight."

"Yes, ma'am."

 

**Oslo, Norway**

Jason scanned the headlines at a newsstand. Predictable world events, mostly. He picked up the New York Times. _American Injured in Athens Riot_.

"You'll have to pay for that," the man at the newsstand said in Norwegian.

"Yes, of course," Jason answered in the same language as he handed over the kroner to cover it.

The article, a small one, said that the names of those injured and killed in the rioting in Athens were still being released. _Greek authorities report that Nicolette Webb, an American information security consultant, was among the injured. Ms. Webb is expected to make a full recovery._

There was nothing more, but Athens, Nicolette Webb. It had to be Nicky. The only question was if she was sending him a message or someone else was setting a trap.

Jason had his bag over his shoulder. The was nothing in his hotel room but fingerprints, and it didn't matter if they knew he'd been there. He tossed the newspaper into a recycling bin and got on a train to the airport.

 

**Athens, Greece**

The doctors and nurses spoke English to her, and called her by her real name. There was no TV in her room. They wouldn't bring her anything to read. When she asked questions about what was happening outside her room, they told her, "You just work on getting better."

A woman came into her room as a nurse left. She was wearing a suit and looked vaguely familiar.

"Hello, Nicky." The woman sat down in the chair next to Nicky's bed. "My name is Heather." That's why she looked familiar.

"I know who you are. What do you want?" If they'd wanted her dead, they could have just let her die.

"Jason Bourne."

Nicky tried not to let her relief show; if Lee was still chasing Jason, that meant he was still alive. "What do you want with him?" What the CIA wanted was undoubtedly to kill him, but maybe she could get something useful out of Lee.

"I want to bring him in," Lee said. "Bourne is a patriot. There's a place for him with the agency."

Nicky laughed, weak and harsh. "Bourne isn't going to work for you."

"I think he will, if I can bring him in." Lee folded her hands over her knee. "And you're going to help me."

"I'm not." Nicky turned her head away from Lee and pretended to fall asleep.

 

**Washington, D.C.**

"Sir, Aaron Kalloor is on the line."

"Send him through." Edwin waited for the click of the transfer. "Aaron, thank you for returning my call."

"Director Russell," Kalloor said stiffly. "I wasn't aware I had a choice in the matter."

"Aaron, we only want to continue the fruitful relationship we've had before."

"That's not how I see it."

Edwin leaned back in his chair. "Look, Aaron, I'll be honest with you. I'm not up on all of the technology these days. Let me send Heather out to talk to you about how we can help each other."

"I'm not going to give you access to everything."

That wasn't a no. Edwin smiled. "I'm only asking for a meeting."

There was a pause, and Edwin let the silence sit there.

"I'll think about it," Kalloor finally said. That was as good as an agreement.

 

**Athens, Greece**

Jason swiped a coat and a surgical cap from a supply room, ducked into another to palm a needle and ampule off of the medication shelves, scooped up a file as he passed a nurse's station.

There was only one guard in front of Nicky's room. Easy enough to keep his head down, face hidden by the file, until he was right there, then, in one swift motion, jab the needle into the guard's neck. Jason caught him as he slumped, and slowly lowered him into a chair.

The room was empty of everyone but Nicky. Jason put down the file he'd used as cover and picked up her chart. Gunshot wounds were never good, but it seemed to back up the news article's report that she would make a full recovery.

Jason replaced her chart and put a hand on her shoulder. "Nicky."

Nicky's eyes opened slowly, then snapped wide. "Jason," she hissed. "You can't be here. They're using me to get to you."

"I know." Jason stepped back.

"Do you?" Her injuries hadn't dampened the fire in her eyes. "Heather Lee was in here all day asking me about you every time I woke up. She thinks she can bring you in to work for them again."

"Or take me out if they can't. I know."

Nicky struggled up onto her elbows with a hiss that made Jason step forward and help her sit up. "Then what are you doing here? You aren't going to do it, are you?"

"Of course not." Jason watched her make a concentrated effort to catch her breath. He couldn't take her out of the hospital, not yet. "But I'm not letting them get to you either."

There was a look in Nicky's eyes that he recognized. It was the one she gave him every time they didn't talk about what he'd been to her before.

"What are you going to do?"

"I have a plan," Jason said. He had several plans. "They're going to know I was here."

Nicky rubbed her eyes. "I can tell them I was asleep and didn't see you."

"Yes, do that." Jason helped her lie down. "Don't let her get to you."

"I managed Dassault," Nicky said. "I can manage Lee."

Jason picked up the file he'd come in with and slipped out the door and down the hall. No one looked twice at him, or at the sleeping guard outside Nicky's door.

 

**Washington, D.C.**

The caller ID on Pam's desk phone read "UNKNOWN," but that wasn't particularly unusual in her line of work, past or present. They'd gotten past the main switchboard, and that marked it as likely to be legitimate.

"Pamela Landy."

"Hi, Pam."

Pam turned away from her desk to look out the window. If he was watching her from one of the surrounding buildings, she could make it easier for him. "David. I wasn't sure you were still alive."

"Yes. I need your help." He sounded tense, but then he'd sounded tense every time she'd talked to him.

"I don't know what I can help you with," she said. "This is a think tank, wholly independent."

"You still have contacts," David said.

Pam waited to see where he was going with this.

"They have Nicky."

Pam sat up straight in her chair. "Who has her?"

"Heather Lee. She's-"

"I know who she is." Pam's fingers tightened around the phone. "You're talking about going up against the CIA. Against the CIA's head of cybersecurity."

"I've gone up against them before," David said. "I'm getting Nicky away from them. I could use your help."

There was really no question. "What do you need?"

 

**Luxembourg City, Luxembourg**

Tom shuffled the reports on his desk. No one was going to read them. They didn't need to produce them. Everyone knew this posting was just the CIA's chosen method of getting him out of the way. The ringing of the phone on his desk was the most exciting thing to happen all day.

"Tom Cronin."

"Tom, it's Pam Landy."

Whatever Pam was calling him about was going to be bad for his career, but, hell, he'd already trashed that by choosing her side once before. "Pam. It's good to hear from you."

"Listen, that's what I wanted to talk to you about," Pam said. "I'm going to be in Luxembourg tomorrow, and I thought we could have lunch."

She was up to something. The agency was probably scrambling operatives to follow them as they spoke. He'd chosen her side a long time ago.

"That sounds great. I'm looking forward to it."

 

**Athens, Greece**

The first thing Director Russell said when Heather answered her phone was, "Kalloor has agreed to a meeting."

Heather frowned at the door to Parsons' room. "I can't leave. This is working. Bourne was here. He knocked out one of the guards."

"Did Parsons talk to him?"

Heather sighed. "She says she didn't see him. It was night. She could have been asleep."

"Kalloor is a priority," Russell said. "You need to be in Palo Alto tomorrow."

Heather frowned deeply, but said, "Yes, sir." Her frown turned into a scowl when she hung up, and she slapped her phone into her hand. "Davis," she snapped.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Wire Parsons' room with cameras. Two guards outside the room and patrols around the building at all times. Get everyone on duty Bourne's picture. He got past us once. Don't let it happen again."

 

**Bucharest, Romania**

Jason loitered outside a bookstore, pretending to browse the cart out front while watching the cafe across the street.

A man in a red baseball cap sat down on the patio cafe. He ordered a drink, drank half of it, and got up, leaving behind his newspaper.

Jason crossed the street. He scooped up the newspaper and the phone it concealed as he passed the cafe. He plugged his headset into the phone and dialed the single number on it.

"This is Elisa," a cheerful voice answered.

"This is David."

"Hello, David. I have the information that was requested for you. I'm sending it through now."

"Thank you." Jason waited for her confirmation that the information had been sent and hung up.

There was a duty roster, personnel files, radio frequency and equipment details, and confirmation of flights for Heather Lee from Athens to San Francisco.

 

**Luxembourg City, Luxembourg**

"Pam." Tom smiled and leaned in to hug her.

"Hi, Tom. Good to see you." Pam slid into the other side of the booth. They ordered, and spent some time catching up.

Two men in suits approached their table before they finished their entrees.

"Yours?" Pam asked quietly.

Tom glanced at them. "No."

"Ms. Landy," one of the men said. "Agent Hall. The agency is very interested to know what you're doing here."

Pam gave the agent a polite smile. "My firm has clients in Luxembourg City." It was wholly true, and could be checked. "I thought I would have lunch with an old colleague while I'm here."

The agents frowned at her, and sat at the next table, where they could hear everything.

Tom eyed them warily; Pam seemed unconcerned.

"Thank you," Pam murmured when she hugged Tom goodbye at the end of lunch.

"You'll tell me what it was about someday?"

"If I can." Pam smiled warmly at him, and nodded to the agents she fully expected to follow her the entire time she was in Luxembourg.

 

**Palo Alto, California**

"Aaron." Heather greeted Kalloor with a firm handshake. "Good to see you again."

Kalloor dismissed his entourage, and closed the door to his office. He sat behind a large desk and gestured Heather into one of the chairs in front of it.

"Aaron," Heather said, "you know why I'm here."

"I don't want to waste your time, Heather, so let me say straight out that I'm not going to do what you want me to do."

Heather met his gaze with a cool one of her own. "The man who shot you wasn't working alone. He was a CIA asset. Director Dewey told him to kill you."

"What the hell, Heather?"

"Dewey wasn't very happy with me at the end either." It was an understatement. "We can help each other, Aaron."

"You want me to help you spy on ordinary people."

"No." Heather leaned forward. "I want you to help me protect this country."

"Or what? You'll kill me?"

"You're thinking too small, Aaron." Heather smiled at him, just a bit. "You help me out, and I get you access to software you haven't even dreamed of."

Kalloor hesitated. "I already have a social media empire."

She had him. "And think what else you could have with tech developed by my people."

 

**Athens, Greece**

Nicky pulled the earbuds out. "They have a backdoor into Deep Dream. That would get them-" She trailed off.

"You didn't know?" Jason prompted her.

They kept their voices low; the guards were unconscious, one in the chair outside Nicky's room, one on the floor inside it, one behind a dumpster outside, and the cameras set to loop, but there were still other people around who might overhear and come to check on any noise.

Nicky shook her head. "No. I was only looking for files about Treadstone and the other programs like it. I had no idea." She handed the earbuds and recorder back to him. "This could be enough to trigger an investigation. People should know."

Jason frowned at her. "Working with Dassault almost got you killed once. I'll help you get out of here, but then you need to get off the grid and live."

"What you were doing wasn't living." Nicky sat forward quickly, hissed in pain, and eased herself into sitting up. "You need a purpose, a reason to keep living, really living."

"My reason," Jason said forcefully, "died with Marie."

Nicky didn't flinch from the name. "Then find a new one. Look at what they did to you, to us, to everyone in Treadstone. We can stop them from doing that again."

"This isn't like Treadstone."

"No, it's worse."

They watched each other for a long moment.

"There's a hacker in Portugal," Nicky said. "Pedro Cardozo. He runs the space in Lisbon. He owes me a favor. Tell him Carrie Wilson sent you. He'll get you into the CIA server. Do you have something to write on?"

Jason handed her a pen and a notebook.

It was her notebook, the one she'd been using before.

Nicky found a blank page and made some notes, then gave it to Jason. "Give him that. He'll find what I found."

Jason took the notebook without promising to do anything with it. "Lee will know I was here."

"I can tell her I was asleep again."

Jason looked from her to the unconscious guard on the floor to the notebook in his hands. "No. Tell her I was sorry to miss her."

 

**Lisbon, Portugal**

"Carrie?" Cardozo looked at the page Jason had torn out of Nicky's notebook. "Yeah, I can do this for her."

Jason put his hand over the page on Cardozo's desk and leaned over him. "They found her when she did it."

Cardozo raised his eyebrows and pushed Jason's hand away. "I'll make sure that doesn't happen again." He waved at the room. "Make yourself comfortable. This could take a while."

Jason pulled a chair over so he could sit while he watched Cardozo. Time ticked by. He breathed, and let it, like he'd been trained to wait.

Cardozo eventually asked, "This what you're looking for?"

Jason skimmed through a couple of the files. It had the original agreement with Deep Dream, at least, and he had the recording about the newest one. "Yes." Before he gave control back to Cardozo he said, "They found me when I tried to access what she downloaded."

"Yeah, that'll happen if they have someone good working for them." Cardozo turned away to another computer. "I'll give you the decryption piece on another drive. Put them both in a machine with no connections, and I mean _no_ connections. Pull the wireless card. If they have someone good, they can activate that shit remotely."

When it was done, Jason had two USB drives and a message for Nicky that her favor had been repaid.

 

**Athens, Greece**

Heather stared Parsons down. "Were you asleep again?"

"No. He said he was sorry he missed you."

Heather's eyes brightened. That was promising. She nodded at the man with her. "Find a chair. We're staying."

"Yes, ma'am."

"I don't know what makes you think you can get him to go back to the agency, but it's not going to happen," Parsons said.

"I think it will."

"Then you don't know Jason at all."

Heather stayed calm; let Parsons get overemotional about it if she wanted. "I don't need to know him. I have data."

Heather's phone rang, and she turned away from Parsons to answer it.

"Your idea to monitor Dassault's hackerspaces paid off." Murphy was in Washington, and Heather had turned active monitoring over to him. "Facial recognition caught a possible match in Lisbon. I'm sending it through."

Heather pulled her phone away from her ear and watched the video clip load. The face wasn't wholly visible, but she'd met him, seen how he moved. "That's him. Who do we have in the area?"

There was a pause filled with clicking of keys, and then Murphy said, "Lisbon office is mostly administrative. We have an asset on the move back there from Porto, should be an hour or two."

Heather looked at Parsons, who wasn't reacting to any of it. "Get him there. Tell him to capture, not kill."

 

**Lisbon, Portugal**

Jason careened around a corner. It didn't deter the car behind him, but he gained a few seconds when it took the other driver longer to regain control of his car. An asset, then, but not one trained like Jason had been.

The road he'd turned onto came to an intersection with a busy street. Jason turned onto it, plowing into traffic. He knocked into a Peugot that spun out behind him. It gained him another few seconds, but then the asset behind him roared up onto the sidewalk.

Jason moved farther into traffic, away from the sidewalk. Cars gave way ahead of him.

Jason jerked the wheel and sped around a corner just as the light changed. There was honking and a crash behind him as the asset tried to follow.

Jason gained a block, two, and turned again. He sped up to get through a stoplight, and again when the noise behind him signaled that the asset was still chasing him.

They tore through the city, knocking cars out of their way.

Sirens joined them eventually. Good if they went after his pursuer and not Jason, bad if they set up roadblocks.

Jason turned, and turned again, and put himself on his sketchy mental map of Lisbon.

Maybe, maybe if he turned back. He went around three sides of a block, going back the way he came on a different street.

There were sirens ahead of him, police cars coming to meet them.

Jason turned, and hit one of them, knocking it into another and using the momentum of the crash to speed around a corner. There was another crunch behind him, and he glanced behind himself to see his pursuer run head-on into the still sliding police cars.

That was better. He'd blocked them from coming after him too quickly. Another few turns, and he slid the car into an empty space. He left the keys on the driver's seat, and walked away, not so fast as to draw notice.

An hour later he was on a train headed east.

 

**Athens, Greece**

Wallis fell, unconscious, into Parson's room. Bourne followed him, holding himself ready.

Davis, in the room with Heather, brought his weapon up, trained on Bourne.

Bourne held his empty hands up. Heather wasn't fooled; Bourne was dangerous no matter what sort of weapons he did or didn't have on him.

"Put down the gun or I'll shoot her."

Heather turned to look behind her. Parsons had a gun trained on her. Where did Parsons get a gun?

It was only a moment, but it was enough that when Heather whipped her attention back to the rest room, Bourne was already halfway through disarming Davis.

He knocked Davis out, and then Heather was the only one on her team still conscious while Bourne and Parsons were both armed.

"She still thinks she can bring you in." Parsons wasn't being overemotional talking to Bourne about it; her voice was perfectly even. "She says she has data."

Bourne was a different story, angry and aggressive when he asked, "What data?"

Heather refused to let him intimidate her. "You're a patriot, Jason. We both are. Your father was too. You need that purpose, just like me, just like your father did. You can come back and help keep our country safe."

Bourne shook his head. "You're not keeping the country safe. And your data's out of date."

"I told you he wouldn't go back," Parsons said.

Bourne moved toward Heather, and then there was a sharp pain in her neck and she felt Bourne catch her as everything went dark.

 

**Albanian Alps, Albania**

Jason turned from the dirt road onto a smaller dirt track, and then onto a track that was just a pair of wheel ruts with grass growing between them. He drove slowly over the rough terrain, but beside him Nicky had gone pale, and her lips thinned to white. It was too soon for another dose of the painkillers Jason had stolen from the hospital for her.

The track ended at a small house. Jason pulled into the clear space in front of the house and turned off the engine. The silence was nearly deafening.

An older woman came out of the house. Jason kept one eye on her while he went around the Jeep to help Nicky out of it. Nicky leaned on him as she climbed down, and let him take her arm as they walked to the house.

"Odeta Berisha?"

"Yes," Odeta answered in Albanian. "You are the ones my son sent?"

"Yes," Jason said in the same language. "Michael and Sara. My sister was hurt. Bujar said you would be able to take care of her while she recovers."

"Yes, yes." Odeta came forward to help Nicky into the house.

Jason went ahead of them to make sure the house was secure.

"You rest, here." Odeta led Nicky to a soft chair. "It is a long drive. I will have dinner ready for you soon. Your brother will get the bags, and look at the roof in the morning."

Odeta fed them a hearty soup with fresh-baked bread, and then showed them to the room they were to share.

"You really think it's safe?" Nicky asked in French. According to Bujar, Odeta spoke Albanian and a little bit of English, but nothing else.

"They don't know we're here," Jason said.

"If they come for us," Nicky said, "I can't run."

"They won't." Jason stashed a gun under either each of their beds, and knives against the bedposts. He put his hands on Nicky's shoulders and met her eyes. "We're safe. We're going to stay safe."

Nicky took a breath and then nodded. "We're safe."

 

**Washington, D.C.**

Pam was no stranger to secure couriers, although they were rarer now than in her previous profession. She signed for the package, and took it into her office to open it.

There was a box inside the courier envelope, with a voiceprint lock. Pam said her name into it, and it opened to reveal a digital recorder of some sort, a pair of thumb drives, and a note.

Put the drives in a computer with no internet access. Pull the wireless card. You'll know what to do with it.  
\- David

Pam closed the box, letting the lock re-engage, and picked up the phone to requisition a laptop.

 

**Luxembourg City, Luxembourg**

The TV was already on when Tom got to the office, tuned to CNN.

"Pamela Landy is no stranger to the whistleblower role," a reporter standing in front of the Capitol said. There was a brief rundown of the last time. "The evidence for Deep Dream's agreement with the CIA includes a conversation between Deep Dream founder Aaron Kalloor and Heather Lee, the head of the CIA's cybersecurity division. This comes close on the heels of the death of CIA Director Robert Dewey. Heather Lee was reportedly on the short list of candidates to become the next director."

"Isn't Landy that friend you had lunch with?" Miller asked. "They're going to come after you for this."

"No," Tom said, trying not to smile. "I was just a distraction."

 

**Three Months Later**  
**Prague, Czech Republic**

Jason melted out of the shadows as Nicky exited the building. He fell into step with her. "Did you get it?"

She nodded. "Already sent to Dassault's people. They'll post it on Sunday night, to hit the Monday morning news cycle."

They walked swiftly through the night, staying in the shadows as much as possible, until they reached a building whose cameras, they'd ensured, hadn't been working right for weeks. They put on gloves, and Jason broke them in.

Nicky programmed their new numbers into their new phones while Jason threw her laptop, their old phones, and the packaging from the new phones into the incinerator. They waited until the fire flared as they caught, and then they slipped out of the building into the night.

They kept walking, pacing the streets of the city, until it started to get light. They ducked into a building with minimal security, and kept watch for each other as they changed clothes.

Nicky put on a flowing, floral print dress and a wide-brimmed hat. Jason swapped his black t-shirt for green and pulled a baseball cap low over his forehead. It would be enough to make it harder for facial recognition to pick them up.

They slipped out of the building and walked slowly to the train station. They went to the ticket counter, both of them smiling, and Jason bought two tickets to Budapest with cash. The passports at the top of their bags identified them as Andrew and Melanie Wright, Americans who'd entered the EU via Berlin.

Nicky bought coffee for him, tea for her, and pastries for both of them. They ate while they waited on the platform for their train. They were surrounded by tourists and backpackers.

They chose a car that had more empty seats than full. Nicky sat by the window, Jason next to her. She slipped her fingers into his and put her head down on his shoulder. She would sleep lightly, and wake up quickly if he moved, more slowly if he squeezed her hand. They would get off the train before Budapest and keep moving, until they were far enough away, until their trail was cold and confused enough that they wouldn't be found.

They had training, and a purpose. They wouldn't get caught.


End file.
